Find Out More:
Scientific Method
How Do I Come Up With a Project?
What Are Some Common Mistakes?
How Do I Do the Experiment?
An Example, Using the Scientific Method
Wrapping Up
Scientific Method return to top
The basic steps of the scientific method are:
- State the problem you will explore in your experiment.
- Do research to discover what is already known about this problem, and to help you figure out your hypothesis, or idea/question to be tested.
- Make a bibliography showing all your sources.
- List the materials you will use in the investigation.
- Next, design an experiment to test your hypothesis. Write down the procedures you will use.
- Make sure that you have only one independent variable (the factor you are testing), and that you have identified the constants (factors that remain the same for all examples in the experiment.)
- Make sure to include a control in your experiment. A control is an example in the experiment that you leave alone and on which you do not perform the experiment. The examples being tested will be compared to this control.
- Make and record your observations and data.
- Analyze the data, including presenting data in the form of data tables, graphs, etc., as appropriate.
- Present the conclusions you arrived at based upon the evidence you gathered.
How Do I Come Up With an Idea for a Project? return to top
The first step in doing your project is to find a problem that interests you.
You should be able to describe why you think your problem is important.
You may find possible topics in books in the library, on the Internet, or from other sources.
Your topic should not be too broad or too large for you to answer. For example, studying the effects of ultraviolet rays on skin or solving the mysteries of how the universe was formed are too difficult or too broad to do.
Your project should not cost much money.
No live animals should be used in any experiment unless you have your teacher’s approval.
What Are Some Common Mistakes? return to top
Here are some of the things to look out for:
Pick a hypothesis that may be tested easily. Most of us do not have access to fancy equipment.
Make sure you can perform your experiment with common household supplies.
Test only one variable. If you change more than one condition in the experiment, you won’t know which of the conditions produced the results you observed.
Take good notes as you make your observations, so you get useable data. A good scientist includes all observations, even the ones that go against the original hypothesis. Many scientific discoveries have been made by looking at the data that did not “fit” what we thought would happen.
A poor presentation can make even a good experiment look bad. Your display should be easy to understand, be neat and attractive, and have good illustrations, including photographs of the different steps in the experiment.
How Do I Do the Experiment? return to top
If you have followed the steps of the scientific method, as outlined above, you should have a good idea of how to proceed. Let’s say, though, that you find that one of your steps is not working well, and that in the middle of the experiment, you decide to change a procedure. Make sure you write down anything that you change and how you changed it. Write down your observations as you go along, because chances are, you won’t remember everything later.
An Example, Using the Scientific Method return to top
Let’s say you want to do an experiment involving plants and how they grow.
Step 1: Do plants grow taller when watered with sugar water?
Step 2: You research plants, what plants need to survive, and different kinds of plants. Your hypothesis, based on your research, is that that the sugar water will help plants grow taller.
Step 3: Create a bibliography showing the resources that you used.
Step 4: Materials: tap water, sugar water, measuring cup, five plants of the same species and size, sunlight, soil, five identical flower pots, ruler.
Step 5: Create the experiment and write down the steps you’ll follow. Let’s say, through your research, you discovered that ¼ cup of water each day is an appropriate amount for the plants. Your daily step is to provide five plants ¼ cup of water each day for six weeks.You’ll measure and record the plants’ growth every other day.
You decided that one plant will receive plain tap water; this is your control – the one on which you are not performing the experiment. The four remaining plants will receive the sugar water. The sugar water should have the same ratio of sugar and water for all plants for the entire experiment.
All of the other conditions for the plants should remain exactly the same: amount of sunlight, size and type of pot, amount and type of soil, temperature, etc. Also, the plants should be the same species and the same size when the experiment begins.
Step 6: Make and record your growth observations and data.
Step 7: Analyzing the data. You may find that ¼ cup of water a day is too much or too little for the plants and they all die. That is still an observation and creates data, although it doesn’t match your hypothesis. You may need to restart your experiment, adjusting the amount of water you provide. You may find that the tap water made the plant grow much taller than the sugar water. Maybe the sugar water plants grew much faster at first, but then the tap water plant caught up. Maybe the sugar water attracted ants and your parents made you stop the experiment. (In this case, you will want to develop another experiment.)
Step 8: Present the conclusion, or what happened.
Wrapping Up return to top
Whew! You’ve survived your school science fair! You have presented your project and shown that you are knowledgeable about your topic. Chances are you’ll have to do another project next year! Why not get started now, and look for a topic that seems interesting. The more interest you have in the topic, the better your project will be. |
